Today, some celebrate Mabon, the second harvest festival. So do I, though I prefer the name Harvest Home, these days. A day of bringing in the fruit of our work, of celebrating our labor.
Today is also the second in my personal string of new years. There is the beginning of school: the beginning of a cycle every year of my life since I was born in some way: as the child of a professor, as a student myself, or as someone working in education.
Today is my birthday: the day when night and day balance, when the days truly seem shorter, when my desire to come home and nest and reflect in the quiet competes with the growing work of the school year. They are both good, both necessary, and they continue to dance in their own helix until June. And following that, there comes Samhain (the pause before the dawning sun of Midwinter and a new cycle of potential) and the calendar’s New Year.
And I am reminded, always, of my birthday’s place, falling as it sometimes does between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Neither are my celebrations, but they were the celebrations of some of my ancestors, in the not too distant past. A time to reflect on the things I’ve regretted, as well as walking forward into the new year of blessing and potential.
Working for a school definitely has its own yearly cycles and festival days: last night I was at the back to school barbecue for staff and their partners, this morning we had our fall all-employee meeting, book discussion, and then time to get things done in . . . → Read More: Integrating my life
I’ve had a couple of people, on hearing about what I’m doing for my friend who recently had surgery (currently in a transitional care/rehab center, and steadily improving), who say “I could never do that.”
And I point out that it’s not everyone’s gift to do the specific things I’m doing. (Scheduling and coordinating . . . → Read More: On taking time to tend
One of my dear friends is currently at the hospital for hip replacement surgery. And so I wanted to quickly post a note to something I wrote (and she reviewed before I posted it) that’s about what I’m doing for her during her recovery. We refer to what I do as being her External . . . → Read More: Being an external brain
I’m currently in Boston, wrapping up part 1 of my vacation to see family and friends out here. (I grew up in a Boston suburb, went to college in a different one, and most of my college friends are still in the area, as is my mother.) Later this morning, we’ll be taking off to see my brother, sister-in-law, and my 5 and 7 year old nieces in New Haven for a few days.
In August, I’ll have lived in Minnesota for 10 years. And yet, while I love Minnesota (deeply: I fell in love with the state on a visit about a year before I moved and have never regretted that choice), coming back to the ocean, to the glacial valleys, to the landscape of my childhood is never a bad thing.
